The savviest online entrepreneurs understand that content can be a key driver for your business.
A huge 49% of marketers report that organic search has the best ROI of any marketing channel, according to the Search Engine Journal, so it’s crucial to get your onsite SEO right.Organic success can bring high returns and revenue with a few virtually no-cost activities, and when coupled with high-quality content should be high on your digital agenda.As one of Brisbane’s leading digital marketing agencies, join us to discover our ultimate onsite SEO checklist.
What Does Onsite SEO Cover?
In a nutshell, onsite SEO means making sure web pages are fine-tuned. This way, you can maximise receiving the most organic traffic and improve rankings on Google SERP, a well-understood acronym for Search Engine Results Page in the digital world.Websites can be improved for the best chance of being visible to your potential customers on Google by optimising:
- URL (web address)
- HTML
- Metadata (including meta description, title and keyword density)
- Creating high quality relevant written content in the form of blogs and articles
- Images and video content
Onsite content also refers to other pages of your website including FAQs, How-to pages, and other guides.
What are the benefits of onsite SEO?
Keyword Optimisation: A good onsite SEO strategy will mean your website pages will be more relevant using keyword research, providing the specific keywords your customers are searching around.Crawlable Pages: Producing detailed pages with the kind of quality content Google requires means their robots will index, crawl and link pages and serve as a useful research and reference point for your readers.Customer communication: Onsite SEO is a great way to connect to your audience more meaningfully and will also promote engagement and help build your brand. Being able to answer their questions authoritatively while linking relevant external sources is an aid in encouraging your customers to convert from research to a sale.So let’s get our checklist underway so you can benefit from a robust onsite SEO strategy to convert customers and increase profits.Let’s start at the beginning with titles.
Title
The best content writers are fully aware of how important a title is to maximise onsite SEO. Getting pole position at the top of our checklist it’s crucial for attracting your customers and giving them the information they are looking for before converting.Getting your user's attention by using enticing titles they are searching for is essential for CTR (click-through rate). You must understand the type of searches your potential customers make and ensure your titles reflect those.Titles are important for users and for Google crawlers who will be looking for the best content to answer your customer's questions.
Header Tags
Using well-defined headings in your website content is a crucial part of onsite SEO. Big blocks of rambling text are a no-no for Google. Breaking up each section with the right header tags means you will tick more on-site SEO boxes.As a quick guide, headers should be used in descending order. However, it’s worth pointing out that the best content creators rarely use H1! They are usually the title, so skip straight to H2 to separate your text blocks.In general, H2 and H3 are the most preferred blocks of text, with the more obvious ‘Title’ as your blog's main header.
Readability
Readability covers a broad spectrum, but broadly it covers grammar, style, syntax and the content's structure.As we mentioned previously, huge blocks of text can be off-putting for readers and are less likely to tick Google’s crawler boxes.Good content should take the reader on a helpful, easy-to-understand journey from beginning to end with an introduction and a conclusion.Industry jargon must be avoided as it’s crucial to understand that the content is about your readers and not about bamboozling them with acronyms and other technical terms and lingo.Although it’s important to let them know your business has the professional knowledge, keep the tone informative and persuasive without being overly technical.
Content Length
Although there is no exact length that will guarantee readership or Google brownie points, content should be of a length to give the reader enough information about a topic.Some experts say content should be around 1,000 words long, whereas industry SEO gurus Yoast declared that 300 words or more are generally sufficient.It’s a delicate balance, but to tick your on-site SEO checklist, ensure your content is longer than 300 words and as relevant as possible.
Duplicate Content
It stands to reason to try to avoid as much duplicate content as possible. This is because it’s not only profoundly unengaging for readers but will be seen as a duplicate by Google crawlers.Google bots will see duplicate content as having no value to your readers, and although you won’t be penalised, it won’t help your onsite SEO efforts.
Rich Content
Adding rich content such as videos will not only help to give structure to your content but will also give a visual means for your audience to engage with.It will depend, of course, on the content itself. So, for instance, readers would appreciate video content in a ‘how to guide’, especially for an audience who responds more to physical advice and visuals.Video content will add to the overall quality by being a helpful addition for your readers.
Image Sizes
The size of images is crucial when planning your onsite SEO strategy. Images are one of the most powerful tools in your content armoury and should be relevant and unique for the best user experience and to please search engine crawlers.Ensure your image size is reduced as much as possible but remains clear and easily seen.A few tools, such as MozJpeg and image resizer, can help create the best-sized images.
Keywords
Although keywords are important, the latest Google intel is that keeping your content written clearly and relevant means keywords will become a part of the text.Historically it was ‘all about the keyword’, but as keyword stuffing became an all too important part of some content, it’s more about including relevant information for your readers than putting all your eggs in the keyword basket.However, ‘key words’ in web content still give an important message to Google that can help achieve ranking content.
Internal and External Linking
Both types of linking can help your readers find the information they are looking for, and the latter will also help build solid backlinks that will help build your onsite SEO.Add relevant internal links to help convert customers and similarly with external links, rather than a ‘link for link's sake’, and this will be seen more favourably by Google crawlers as it’s more to the point for your audience.
Crawlability
This is a crucial part of onsite SEO, and if your website is blocked for some reason by Google bots, then no amount of good, high-quality content will increase rankings.Check these boxes below
- Make sure all external links are live and not broken
- A clear sitemap.xml
- Enough internal links
Experts in onsite SEO will be able to check this for you.
Page Loading Speed
As we touched on earlier, page loading speeds can have a crucial bearing on your website ranking. Pages that open too slowly can cause frustration for your audience and might move them away from competitors' content.As we mentioned earlier, image size can be a defining factor in your page loading speed, but it could also be a more serious issue, such as problems with your host and/or server.Here are a few more reasons pages may be loading too slowly to add to your onsite SEO checklist.
- Large and/or uncompressed JavaScript or CSS files
- Large amounts of HTML
- Redirect loops and chains
In Summary
As you can see, many different factors can contribute to a website with a great onsite SEO strategy. Make sure you start working on yours today for higher ranking, more authority, and customers.Many of them are quick, easy fixes, but others require the skill and knowledge of the best SEO onsite experts, so if you are in Brisbane or the surrounding areas of Australia, drop us a line to find out how we can help.
